fire lens

[mudd turtle]

Does anyone know a sutler that sells a fire lens that I can carry in my haversack. I found a person who had some for sell but forgot the name of their business. Mudd Turtle

 

[boar]

One of my best is out of a bath room scale. Dilly

 

[Black Hand]

The one I have is from an old scope off a hunting rifle.

 

[No Deer]

Jas. Townsend:[url] http://jas-townsend.com/index.php?cPath=25[/url]

 

Go to the school supplys department of Wall-Mart and buy one off the rack. Take it out of its little Sherlock Holmes handle and drop it into your fire kit.

Cost, $1.98

 

[mudd turtle]

Sounds good I don't know why I didn't think of that. Will go tomorrow and get me one or two. Thanks for the reply and help. Mudd Turtle.

 

[TANSTAAFL]

Ted Cash, think it is called Cash MFg.
now days, they work great.

Yep:
[url] http://www.tdcmfg.com[/url]/

 

[nuttbush]

On the above link[url] jas-townsend.com[/url], you can also put magnifying glass in the search box and it will bring up three different glasses they sell.
The small one is only 3 bucks.

 

[TANSTAAFL]

I like the Cash box with the lens, there is adequate room for my small fire steel, flint & char, for night or if the sun isn't shining. (small chance of that here in AZ though )

 

[crockett]

I have never tried using a lense. Do you put char cloth under it? (In other words, just set the tinder box out in the sun with char under the lense) How long does it take to get an ember? Does the lense get scratched up over time and does that effect its ability to get an ember?

 

[TANSTAAFL]

This is the one I have, lense has a protective cap cover. I use char for fire starting, it is almost instant when the hand focused beam hits it. For pipe starting, (my main usage of it) takes a bit longer.

 

[mudd turtle]

Depends on how sunny it is. What I do is use punky wood ,char cloth and sometimes on unchared punk I use a little bit of powder on the wood to get it alite. Use very little powder here -you only need a few grains ,not a lot of powder. Make sure the powder horn or container is well away from fire. Now take your fire lens, angle it and focus the light until you see some smoke to start coming up. On char or punk look for the fire to start as a small circle.does not take long. Next you drop the char or punk into your tinder and genty blow until it burst into flame, Rember be safe when makeing fire ,make sure you dont burn down the house or the woods or get your self hurt in the process. With this information you should be able to make fire with a fire lens. Mudd Turtle

 

[mudd turtle]

I got one of those also. I don't use it much and the lens cover dont stay on. Mudd turtle.

 

[TANSTAAFL]

Use mine a lot, no problems.

 

[mudd turtle]

Maybe I got a cheap one. Mudd turtle

 

[paulvallandigham]

If the Tedd Cash lens cover is loose, just pinch it on the sides and it will work fine. Its brass, unless you bought one made of steel. Either can be pinched and will hold. Its just a friction fit over the lens mount.

I played around with larger lenses as a kid, when I didn't know what " dry " meant. I burned holes in lots of things trying to get a fire going. If you carry charred cloth, use it to begin an ember. Then put your charred cloth in your nest of dry tinder, and blow or wave it into a fire. Always have all your firemaking sticks ready by your hearth BEFORE you begin starting a fire. It goes very quickly, but dry tinder burns up quickly. As hard as it is to find and keep dry tinder, you don't want to waste any of it. If you are out of charred cloth, put some black powder on a cleaning patch( dry, turn an edge over and rub the patching between your fingers to crush the powder and rub it into the cloth. Then use that to begin an ember with your lens. The blackened area will absorb heat much better than the white. You can do the same with dry bark. If you don't have BP with you, you can find Birch bark which contains an oil. Some say that Sycamore and popular bark also seem to work well and have some kind of oils in them, but I have no experience with them. You can find dead cottonwood( poplar) trees in most of the U.S. with limbs well off the ground that are peeling bark. That is the bark to pick, not something off a limb lying on the ground and half buried by weeds. I have used dead poplar leaves- broad and flat and brown- to start a fire with a lens, and I did get an ember going. I did not know then how to blow that ember into a fire, but if you can get an ember, you can make fire.

 

[pab1]

You can get an ember going on a dry piece of wood. Work the lense in a small circle and blow on the spot constantly. It takes a while, but it works. Once the ember is glowing, add dry grass or other tinder and keep blowing to get a flame.

 

[LRB]

Hey Crockett, if you are in snow country during winter, you can use ice shaped with your hands. I think a lens would have to be badly scratched and scarred before it would not work.

 

[TANSTAAFL]

I have read of taking a grass stem, twisting it into a loop, then dip into water and a spherical ball of water will form in the loop, then use it as a lens for starting a fire.

Sounded great, but I could never get anything except wet grass.

 

[paulvallandigham]

Yeah, and there are 20 foot alligators living in the sewers of NYC that began life as those small gators sold in dimestores, but flushed down toilets.

There are some great forums that people can go to about making fire with make shift lenses, including those made from ICE. Check out
[url] http://www.wildwoodsurvival.com/index.html[/url]